Oral devices, such as a pacifier and/or an artificial nipple on a bottle, are commonly used for pacifying or feeding infants or toddlers. To ensure a proper development of child's oral structures, an appropriate oral device needs to be used, which is particularly important during the infant stage. Even after a child stops using an oral device, the device is often replaced by the child's finger, thumb, lip and/or tongue, and the child can thus develop dysfunctional oral habits. Such oral habits induce abnormal constrictive sucking forces. The adverse effects of constrictive sucking forces on the configuration of dental arch, such as development of malocclusion, have been well established. See Douglass, C. (ed). Oral Care Report 15(2): 4 (2005); Ogaard, B., et al., “The effect of sucking habits, cohort, sex, intercanine arch widths, and breast or bottle feeding on posterior crossbite in Norwegian and Swedish 3-year-old children,” Am J Orthod Dentofacial Orthop. 106: 161-66 (1994); Warren, J. J., Bishara, S. E., “Duration of nutritive and nonnutritive sucking behaviors and their effects on the dental arches in the primary dentition,” Am J Orthod Dentofacial Orthop. 121: 347-56 (2002); and Warren, J. J., et al., “Effects of oral habits' duration on dental characteristics in the primary dentition,” JADA 132: 1685-93 (2001).
Feeding is a multifunctional process including sucking, chewing, and swallowing, which also modulates the opening of the middle ear tube. Especially for infants, feeding involves multilayered neuromuscular coordination among the functions of sucking, swallowing, and breathing due to the fact that infants are fed in supine position.
In functional aspect, it has been established that artificial nipples alter the mechanism of the oral physiology and that breastfed babies have therefore higher oxygen saturation than bottle-fed babies. Studies showed that bottle-feeding induces a higher rate of swallowing and frequent interruptions of breathing, while breast-feeding allows spontaneous sucking and breathing without disruption from frequent swallowing. During the active infant-child growth period, the neuromuscular coordination of sucking, swallowing, and breathing not only inflicts the development of the dental arches but is also involved in blood oxygenation during feeding.
Multiple types of oral devices have been developed. However, existing oral devices can exacerbate the activation of the oral-facial muscles exerting excessive constriction due to inward and forward forces imparted by a child upon an oral device during sucking.
Accordingly, there is a need for improved oral devices that facilitate sucking force for proper development of oral structures.